FACT mix 187: El Guincho

Pablo Díaz-Reixa entered our lives in 2008 with the quietly dazzling Alegranza, an album that combined elements of US psyche, dub, synth-pop and Brazilian tropicalia into what its maker described as a kind of “space age exotica”. Looking back now, Alegranza seems like a particularly prescient work: along with Panda Bear’s Person Pitch it boldy scouted out the terrain in which so many chillwave, hypnagogia and sun-warped pop artists now comfortably reside.

Earlier this year the Barcelona-based Guinch released the first instalment in his limited edition Piratas de Sudamérica EP series. Recorded at home with deliberately low frequency response then bounced down to the tape, the EP consisted of covers and rearrangements of South American standards and lost classics. This spirit of discovery informs his totally unique FACT mix, wherein he finds incredible, often unlikely psychedelic resonances in traditional music and pop from the Spanish-speaking world, elegantly editing tracks by the likes of Javier Solis, Rolando Laserie and Gloria Lasso into a hypnotic and righteous flow. We also reckon this is the first and last time you’ll hear a Julio Iglesias track on a FACT mix.

Enjoy, and be sure to check out El Guincho’s new album, Pop Negro, out now on Young Turks.